Always Second Best
by Penbrydd
Summary: [EOL]If something had gone on between Genma and Hayate, someone would have had to have been second best Hayate had Yuugao, after all. Now Hayate's dead, and Genma really can't hack it. Kakashi, Kotetsu, and Izumo pick up the pieces. New chapters are 2, 3
1. Chapter 1

_**Disclaimer: **Naruto is not my toy, although sometimes I wish it was. Everyone you meet here belongs to Masashi Kishimoto, I just borrow them, occasionally.  
_

_**Author's Note:** __I'm an asshole, and I apologise. I seem to be writing this story all out of order. __Apparently, I didn't get this AU out of my head, like I thought I did. It's been festering in a puddle of PTSD, and now I have to press out the literary pus that has swelled my nightmares._ _It spawned an explanatory first chapter. Hmph. Who knew?  
_

_This hasn't been beta'd yet, but I expect to have the corrections in the next couple days. Pardon any spelling errors or missing commas in the mean time. _

_**Warnings:** ANGST! ...and referenced past character death. (Yaoi in the next chapter.)  
_

* * *

_All in the terror of the moment  
That pounces as it open swings  
A line of dots illuminated  
For I have seen the speed of things__.  
--Robyn Hitchcock, "The Speed of Things"_

Gekkou Hayate had been dead for about two months, and Genma was taking it exceptionally poorly. He had been out on missions almost constantly, to the point that his apartment smelled musty and unused. He couldn't clearly pinpoint the last time he'd slept in his own bed, or even in _a_ bed, for that matter. And now, he was arguing with the Hokage about taking another mission.

Genma glared lazily at Tsunade across the Hokage's desk. "Just give me the damned gate shift."

The Hokage leaned back in her large chair and sipped at a mug of sake. "No. I can't waste your talents like that. Let the chuunin handle the gate. I have a nice A-ranked mission --"

He leaned forward and tore off his hitai-ate, slamming it down on the desk, metal side up. Whipping the senbon out of his mouth with the other hand, he drove it into the edge of the leaf symbol, and cut a small scratch. "Shinobi have no emotions. That's the party line, isn't it? That's what we teach our children. But even a good man can't be rid of them all, all the time. And that's the trick, isn't it. That's the part that's left off the end, but we all know it, don't we, Hatake-san?"

He levelled his furious eyes at Kakashi, who stopped moving toward him, spine stiffening in shock and memory. Kakashi closed both his eyes, even though one was still covered, and tilted his face down. He would not speak. This was not his fight.

Genma wouldn't let him off that easily. "_In public_. Those are the missing words at the end of that sentence. Possibly even "in front of anyone", in which case I'm damn well violating that very first rule  
right this minute.

"But how many times can one man lose every-goddamn-thing before he finally loses his mind, too? Hontou desu ne, Hatake-san? I remember when you came back with that eye. You scared the living shit out of me. Sure, we were young, then, but you started before I did. You lost first. I know that the medics kept you for three days after your first night back. I know --"

Kakashi had finally heard enough. Face flushed and eyes smiling, he untied his hitai-ate and tucked it neatly in his pocket. He would be a man, not a shinobi, for this. "You know nothing. You weren't there." His voice was pleasant and calm, and he tucked his hands into his pockets, but not quite quickly enough that Genma couldn't see them shaking. "I'm told I was screaming, but what is truth? I don't remember it. Take your mourning to the stone, but don't take it to work with you. You'll get yourself killed, Shiranui-san, and then I will have watched another one go."

Genma laughed bitterly. "The average jounin doesn't get much older than I am, you know. Look at the fucking files, Hatake-san. There's a reason that our Hokage is Hokage -- jounin die young, but she's still breathing. And how? Because she and her two merry men ran off into the world, all in opposing directions, and pretended to be real people for twenty-five goddamn years."

Tsunade finally responded, finishing the sake and slamming the mug down with enough force that it crumbled and dented the desk. "There was nothing left for us here! Orochimaru wasn't cut out to be Hokage, and Jiraya and I were too occupied with other things. The Fourth was chosen because he was Jiraya's student and he cared about the village in ways that we couldn't. I'm here, now, because I lost a bet with a small boy. I'm still a 'real people', Genma. I'll never be anything else."

Genma smiled lazily and stared back at the Hokage in mild amusement. "Right. Now, back to the original question: Are you giving me the gate shift, or am I going to throw away the last of what I have, and walk away from this village and everyone in it? Will you give me the goddamn gate shift, or will I take this mission and go missing? Maybe I can die an old man, somewhere. Buy a tea shop, find someone to spend my life with who will actually survive me..."

His voice cracked. "I like it here, Tsunade-sama. But, if I don't get a goddamn vacation, I'm either going to die, or I'm going to leave. I can't keep doing this, right now."

"Tsunade-sama," Kakashi spoke again, this time, sharply, "give him the gate shift. You will waste more of his talents if he dies."

Kakashi stepped forward and placed his hands on Genma's shoulders. "You'll die of a heart attack, if you don't calm down. Come away. You'll get your shift." He glared meaningfully at Tsunade with both eyes open. "Come on, Shiranui-san, I know this great little bar with dancing girls. Dancing girls are good for all the ills of the mind, and vodka is even better."

Genma's hands relaxed and he stuffed his hitai-ate into a pocket of his vest and slipped the senbon back into his mouth. Kakashi was close enough to kill him -- or at least incapacitate him -- if he didn't do as he was told. He sniffed and wiped his nose; his last gambit would be petulance. "I don't like dancing girls. They're annoying."

Kakashi smiled brightly behind his mask. "Then we'll get a bottle and go back to Iruka's place! If we pour enough into him, I bet he'd dance on the table for you."

Petulance failed him, and Genma looked up at Kakashi in shock and horror. Table-dancing Iruka-sensei? That was... that was... (sick!) (wrong!) (deranging!) (strangely erotic...) (absolutely fucking inconceivable!) His brain suddenly ceased to function. "Iruka... _Umino Iruka-sensei_... dancing... on a table? I... but... that's..."

His jaw dropped, and Kakashi caught the senbon as it fell from his lips. "I've done it once; I can make it happen again," Kakashi tempted.

"You're sick. I'm in." He snatched back his senbon with a scowl, and stuck it between his teeth.

"Gate shift, Tsunade-sama, or I'm leaving and taking this sick fuck with me," he called over his shoulder as he followed Kakashi out of the room.


	2. Chapter 2

_**Disclaimer: **Naruto is not my toy, although sometimes I wish it was. Everyone you meet here belongs to Masashi Kishimoto, I just borrow them, occasionally.  
_

_**Author's Note:** Maa... can I please be done with this fucking AU, now? This takes place about a month after the scene in Tsunade's office.  
_

_**Warnings:** ANGST! ...and referenced past character death.  
_

* * *

"_There were spikes in his sandals, spikes in his ankles... A spike split the wood, syringed his vertabrae. Spikes in his shins in his chin in his fingers... Amused apparitions hummed the Marsollaise. We had to look away, he seemed so fragile._"  
--The Legendary Pink Dots, "Stoned Obituary"

He perched alone on the roof, senbon in his right hand, instead of in his mouth. He looked like some feral beast from a legend, eyes wide, lips stripped back from his teeth in a lip-splitting grimace, greasy hair hanging lank and tangled around his face. He wore nothing but an open flak vest and black cotton workout pants. He had the night off, and neither knew nor cared who was at the gate. It didn't matter. None of it mattered.

If anyone was listening -- really listening -- they might hear the thin, whispering hisses that slid out of his mouth in time to the rhythm of the senbon's point striking the flesh of his left hand, leaving small holes that trickled blood. "...not true. not true. this isn't real none of this is real not happening not true not true..." And suddenly, with a wild look around, he leapt down from the rooftop, to the next, headed for the village gate, moving just fast enough to make it unclear who he was.

And someone had been listening -- listening and watching. Kakashi watched as Genma fled the village in a mad haze, and followed him. This was, after all, Genma -- the tokubetsu jounin who could do more damage with less material than anyone he knew, except perhaps Gai. It wouldn't be safe to leave him alone with himself, tonight.

Kakashi caught up to the senbon specialist, and concealed himself in a nearby tree, lowering his chakra emanations and performing a low-level 'look-elsewhere' genjutsu. He was fairly certain that Genma was far enough gone that his precautions would be unnecessary, but there was no point in tempting fate. The older jounin was actually dangerous.

Genma stared accusingly into the trees for a few minutes, as if angry with some unseen opponent, before the scream tore itself from his throat. Kakashi had been blissfully unaware, prior to this moment, of the sounds one made inhaling in the midst of a scream, to keep it going. He supposed he had done it, but he never remembered, so that was okay. But now, that sound would be permanently inscribed in his consciousness -- that sound of gagging desperation. And the impotent rage, the pain and the bitterness just kept pouring from Genma's mouth in a long stream of incoherent noise. He fell to his knees as the oxygen deprivation took its toll, but the noise barely wavered.

And then Genma lifted the senbon in his right hand and slammed it through the center of his left palm. And the screaming stopped, replaced by a curious, numb silence. He stared down at his hand, first as if uncomprehending, then as if he were looking at dying bird. He lifted his left hand to his face with his right, and kissed the tips of his own fingers as though they were someone else's. Finally, he leaned to the side, lowering himself to the floor of the forest, and curled into a ball, clutching the hand to his chest. Quietly, he wept.

Kakashi was horrified. Was this what it looked like when a man fell apart? Again, he was sure he had done it, but he'd never seen it and never remembered it. He dropped silently from the tree and went to kneel at Genma's side, resting a hand on the older jounin's shoulder. "Genma? Genma, come on, you can't stay like this."

Genma opened his eyes, but they didn't look right. He opened his mouth to speak, and started with a cracked hitch. "Hayate...?"

Kakashi flinched as though he'd been slapped. "No, I'm sorry, Genma. I'm just Kakashi."

Genma curled up more tightly around himself and started to cry again. Kakashi decided, in that moment, that when he figured out who had killed Hayate, he was going to fuck him up. Not kill him, of course -- no matter what Yuugao thought, that honour clearly belonged to Genma -- but maybe break all of his fingers, one joint at a time, and then cut them off and shove them down his throat. Yeah, it was just a job. Yeah, it wasn't supposed to be personal. Yeah, this was exactly what he'd been warning Genma about in the Hokage's office, last month.

It was a whole lot clearer to him, now, just how easy it was to cross that line.

He pulled Genma's hair away from his face, and stroked the other man's cheek with the back of his glove. "Shh, it's alright," he lied, voice surprisingly gentle, "It's all over, now. Let me get you home -- you can't stay out here all night, the onbaa wil eat you, and then where will we be, hm?"

"Not home," Genma choked, "Please, not home. I can't--"

"Okay, not home. Not yours, anyway." Kakashi thought about where to take him. His own apartment had been the first thought, but it was a squalid disaster area of a place. He'd forgotten to do the laundry or clean out the fridge, before that last mission, and he was paying for it now. "How about I take you to Kotetsu's? He'll know what to do for you. And I'm sure Izumo has some wonderful tea for these sorts of occasions."

Genma didn't try to speak again, just nodded and lay limply on the ground. Kakashi smiled with a cheerfulness that had to have been fake, lifted Genma in his arms, and ran like hell for the village. He knew Kotetsu and Izumo were sleeping, but they'd get up for this.  



	3. Chapter 3

_**Disclaimer: **Naruto is not my toy, although sometimes I wish it was. Everyone you meet here belongs to Masashi Kishimoto, I just borrow them, occasionally.  
_

_**Author's Note:** Maa... can I please be done with this fucking AU, now? This follows the last chapter directly.  
_

_**Warnings:** ANGST! ...and referenced past character death.  
_

* * *

"_I made mistakes. I've been a fool. I tried hard but never thought that what started so well could end in misery. But my motives  
were good. I thought you all understood... Just don't be hard when this day is cloaked in history_"  
--The Legendary Pink Dots, "Stoned Obituary" 

Kakashi sprinted up the stairs at the front of the apartments and skidded to a halt in front of the door, slamming his head into it a few times, since his hands were full. He looked down at the dreamy expression on Genma's face, and proceeded to headbutt the door until Kotetsu opened it.

"Help. Please." Kakashi held out his arms, displaying Genma's broken condition. There was no need to say more.

"Shit." Kotetsu glanced back over his shoulder. "Izumo, we've got a critical! Get up!"

He stepped back into the apartment, scratching his bare chest with one hand and holding the door open for Kakashi with the other. "Just lay him on the cushions in here, so I can get a better look."

Kakashi nodded gratefully and carried Genma into the living room, arranging the cushions from around the table in a more useful fashion while Kotetsu closed the door. As he set Genma on them, he realised he was still wearing his sandals. "I'm sorry about your floor," he offered, walking back toward the door, to remove them.

"Fuck the floor. Is he alive?" Kotetsu waved his hand dismissively and walked to where Genma lay.

"If he were dead, we'd still be in the forest, and I'd be wearing a mask. One that's not part of my face, already." Kakashi returned to Genma and Kotetsu as Izumo entered the room carrying a black box stuffed with assorted medical supplies.

"Living? I think we can handle it if he's still breathing." Izumo looked relieved and gestured with the box. "You end up with a hefty repair kit when your two best friends are tokubetsu jounin."

Kakashi shook his head. "I'm not really worried about his hand..."

Kotetsu was examining the hand in question. "That's pretty nasty. Did it himself?"

"Yeah." Kakashi's skin crawled at the memory.

Kotetsu held out his hand and Izumo placed a bottle in it. He cupped Genma's hand and poured the liquid into it. "I don't want this to hurt more than it did going in."

He held the bottle back out to Izumo, and had it replaced with a gauze pad, which he used to soak up a bit of the fluid, and then he impaled it on the part of the senbon that stuck out the back of Genma's hand. Kotetsu closed his eyes for just a moment and took a deep breath before gripping the senbon and pulling it out in one clean jerk. The pad pressed anesthetic into the open hole as the senbon was removed, and more drained down through the puncture from his cupped palm. A brief shout escaped Genma at the sudden pulling-burning sensation, and he tried to sit up, but Izumo pressed a foot firmly into his shoulder.

"Stay down, Genma. You've really done yourself one, this time. Just stay put." Izumo looked sadly at his dirty, slightly less than human friend, bleeding on the floor and handed Kotetsu another pad and a roll of tape.

"Just let me die!" Genma wailed.

Izumo lifted the foot from his shoulder and kicked him sharply, but not hard, in the side of the head. "Baka. You're not going to die. You're going to take a bath, and I'm going with you so you don't drown."

Kotetsu smiled beatifically at Kakashi, who raised his eyebrows and nodded approvingly. There was more to Izumo than one might expect.

Kotetsu turned his eyes back to Genma, and pulled the man upright by his good hand. "You fucking moron. What, four becomes three, three becomes two? I'm going to punch you in the teeth as soon as I'm sure you're sane enough to understand why I'm doing it. Go take a fucking bath with Izumo. It'll be good for you. You stink."

Izumo led Genma out of the room, and the sound of running water could be heard. Kotetsu turned back to Kakashi. "How did it happen?" he asked, gesturing for Kakashi to follow him to the kitchen.

Kakashi shook his head and followed. "I just came in a couple hours ago, so I was taking out the trash -- I swear this is why I don't buy food -- and I saw him up on the roof. You know, he's only the next building over from mine."

Kotetsu stopped fishing around in the cabinets and held up his hand. "You forgot to clean out the fridge? I don't know which one of you is stupider, tonight."

"Gee, thanks. I hope Izumo sneezes again and bites it off, this time." That one had been all over the mission room, when it happened. Especially since it had happened in the bathroom there.

Kotetsu covered himself reflexively before he went back to looking for the good tea. "Maa... don't joke about things like that! Go back to the part about why Genma's here."

"Well, I didn't know it was him, at first, so I went for a closer look. I don't think he's been home in a couple of days. Not properly home, anyway. He was whispering to himself, 'not true' and 'this isn't real'. Poking at his hand with that senbon. Then he took off like a jackrabbit, so I followed him." Kakashi stared at a wall for a few seconds. "I don't really want to talk about the rest. I'd much rather forget I've seen it. Let's just say he stabbed himself in the hand, and I carried him here."

Kotetsu stopped making the tea and tidied it away, except for one cup, which he sat aside. He took a bottle of sake down from on top of the fridge and set it in the middle of the table before extracting two tall glasses from the cabinets and filling them. He handed one to Kakashi. "Drink. If _you_ don't want to talk, I don't think I want to hear it."

Kakashi took the glass. "Indeed." He saluted with the glass, then turned his back, lowering the mask to pour half the sake down his throat.

Kotetsu sipped his glass and watched the ritual in amusement. Sharingan Kakashi, the Copy-nin, the man who consisted almost entirely of one blue eye and an Icha Icha novel. Standing in his kitchen. Drinking his sake like water. And still remaining faceless. It was impressive, really.

"Kakashi, one more favour?" Kotetsu sounded unsure, and Kakashi turned back around with interest.

"Maybe. What is it?"

"We'll keep him. Would you go clear out his apartment? I'd do it, but, you know, he lived with Hayate..."

_Lived with Hayate._ That had been the piece Kakashi was missing. The one thing that had slipped his mind. Now he knew why Genma hadn't been home, recently. "Sure. I'll even filter out what I can tell isn't his, and give that to you separately. No sense in bringing trouble to him along with his clean laundry."

Kotetsu smiled. "Thanks, Kakashi. Really."

Kakashi turned his back again to finish the glass of sake. "Shh," he held a finger up to his covered lips as he turned back around. "It's alright." 


	4. Chapter 4

_**Disclaimer: **Naruto is not my toy, although sometimes I wish it was. Everyone you meet here belongs to Masashi Kishimoto, I just borrow them, occasionally.  
_

_**Author's Note:** Everyone seems to forget, when they pair Genma with Hayate, that Hayate had a girlfriend. I decided that you really can have it both ways, but someone's going to be second best._

_This hasn't been beta'd yet, but I expect to have the corrections in the next couple days. Pardon any spelling errors or missing commas in the mean time. _

_**Warnings:** ANGST! YAOI! Ménage à trois! ...and referenced past character death.  
_

* * *

_I threw some earth onto your coffin,  
and thought about the speed of things.  
--Robyn Hitchcock, "The Speed of Things"_

Genma walked quietly into the apartment, returning from a late gate shift, and stripped his clothes off while walking toward the bathroom, where he tossed them into the laundry pile beneath the sink without looking in the mirror. He refused to reflect on that reluctance as he stood nearly naked before the toilet, stripping off his hitai-ate with one hand while he pissed and adding it to the pile. He spit the senbon he kept between his teeth -- the last marker of himself -- into the wall above the towel rack as he left the room. The small cluster of holes surrounding it suggested that this was a nightly ritual, this abandonment of the expected self.

He had lost his identity since Hayate had been murdered. Had sunk away into nothingness -- an empty void behind the mask of idle, tired contempt he wore in public. He had shared Hayate with that woman -- had been second to her in Hayate's mind -- but that was acceptable; Hayate had wanted a family, and that was the one thing Genma wouldn't give him. Nevermind "couldn't", they could perfectly well have adopted, but Genma had no tolerance for children -- and so his best friend and favourite body pillow had gone out and gotten a girlfriend. That was fine. He had survived it, lived with it, and gotten what he could have when he could get it. But he couldn't share Hayate with the grave, primarily because death was an inherently monogamous relationship -- the grave does not share its claims with the living.

He tried desperately to stop thinking, or at least to change the subject, as that spot in his back began to ache again -- just below the left shoulderblade and in toward the spine. Hayate had known instinctively where to find the spot and when to press his fever-chilled fingers into it. Genma flinched at the thought, face contorting in pain at both the brilliantly clear realisation that he would never again feel those wonderful, if slightly clammy, fingers on his back and the twisting pain that those fingers would not be relieving. He tilted his head back as he entered the bedroom, letting the tears slide down the back of his throat, rather than across his face. Forcing the bitterness back into the hole in his heart, he returned his face to the mask of quiet resignation he usually wore -- that standard slightly irritated but mostly blasé expression -- and slid into the bed between Kotetsu and Izumo.

Kotetsu, as usual, failed to wake, and slid an arm around Genma's chest, pulling him close and burying his nose in the back of the newcomer's neck. Genma smirked at the usual act of possession. Sometimes he wondered when Kotetsu would just lift a leg on him, and get it over with. On the other side of him, Izumo woke up just enough to make space, and then slid back against him, ass pressed firmly into his crotch, and with one arm reached back and claimed his right arm to snuggle. He allowed them to own him, to claim him as their own, because that's what friends do for a man who has lost his heart and his purpose.

Friends... he had five years on the two, but they had been Hayate's friends. Those three had gone to the academy together, and had been inseparable, even fifteen years after they'd met. And then, Hayate had met him, and three had become four. And now they were three again. Three driven together all the more firmly by the loss of their fourth. He groped Izumo's chest and lightly bit his shoulder at that thought -- all the more firmly, indeed. Neither of the other two would ever be Hayate, but the feeling of Kotetsu driving him into Izumo, the teeth on his back and the hot pressure on his insides as he was possessed by one and in turn possessed the mouth and ass of the other, was impossibly beautiful. They would never have Hayate back, but they had each other. Just the same, he tried to hide the scar he had on one arm, where he had bitten himself time and again to keep from calling Hayate's name as Izumo writhed beneath him.

And late at night, sometimes, he wept alone. For all that the two had been Hayate's friends, his was a different pain. He had devoted his life to someone for whom he would never be more than second best, and even that had been stolen.

Genma clutched Izumo to his chest, burying his face in the chuunin's shoulder and gently sucking at the angle where the shoulder blended into the neck. Tonight, he hurt, but the taste of skin would go far in making him forget.


End file.
